Arts Education | NW Education

Making Work of Art, Part 2
A POWERFUL COMBINATION

The Northwest Academy doesn't sacrifice traditional coursework for the sake of art. Rather, the school sees arts and academics as two equally important facets of a sound education. In cramped quarters in downtown Portland, students have ample opportunity to pursue both. Here, young dancers flex their muscles and stretch their minds, budding artists sculpt their clay and hone their writing skills, and aspiring musicians strive for perfect pitch and struggle with geometry.

With degrees in both dance and English literature, Folberg, 58, is proof that arts and academics make for a powerful combination. She is well known for founding the highly regarded dance program at Jefferson High, an arts magnet school in the Portland district. For 17 years Folberg choreographed and coached the troupe, which performed throughout the United States to critical acclaim. She also watched many of her students struggle with their academic coursework -sometimes because it was too challenging, but often, she suspected, because it wasn't challenging enough to hold their interest, or wasn't delivered in a manner that suited their learning styles. The Northwest Academy is filled with these kinds of students: too different to fit in at a typical school, or too creative to sit still through a day of back-to-back lectures, or too bright to be challenged by grade-level academics.

Long before Folberg left Jefferson, she began thinking about a program that would work for such students. Supporting her instincts with educational research-primarily that of Harvard's Howard Gardner-she began designing a curriculum that would make room for creativity right in the academic classroom. After three years of phone calls, plans, and paperwork, Folberg opened the school to part-time arts elective students in the fall of 1996. One year later, the full-time academic program was up and running. Today the academy has close to 50 full-time students, with 90 more kids from other public and private schools throughout the region taking advantage of the rich elective offerings. Two students actually live on the Oregon coast; their families have rented Portland apartments just so they can attend the academy.

Folberg moves through her school with the grace of a dancer, and she is always moving, juggling 10 tasks at once. But she makes time for the students who cruise into her office just to chat. And when she focuses on a topic like the relationship between arts and learning, her attention is undivided, her passion strong.

"I had taught long enough in the arts to know that juxtaposing the arts with academics was the answer," she explains. "You're talking about exploiting multiple intelligences, using all the senses, kinesthetic learning-all these things that Gardner has proved, which we in the arts have known for years, but by trial and error. The research is there, and nobody in schools is taking it too seriously yet. But they are going to need to, at some point."

In schools across the country, mainstream arts education seems to be catching on. Art and music, once seen as gravy to meatier basics like English literature and algebra, are now being linked to a number of benefits for students. Researchers have been building a strong case that the arts foster flexible thinking, collaboration and teamwork, self-discipline, and an appreciation for diversity-traits that have captured the attention not just of educators, but of the business world, as well.

Educating for the Workplace Through the Arts, a 1996 report by the Getty Education Institute for the Arts, suggests that the increasing demand for workers with strong communication skills and technological know-how is changing the way we view the arts. Because students of the arts learn early on that there is no one right way to present an idea, arts education encourages "suppleness of mind" and an ability to "make trade-offs among alternative courses of action," according to the report. In the real world, knowing how to deal with disparate ideas-and shifting intellectual gears accordingly-always beats rigid thinking.

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